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September 28, 2012

Wanted: One 'large' piece of history

Washington Times-Herald

WASHINGTON — Former Boy Scout Dennis Boring is trying to preserve a little bit of local Scouting history, but he’s run up against a brick wall he can’t quite scale.

Boring, who was a Boy Scout in the 1950s, is looking for a missing scrapbook filled with photos and newspaper clippings he believes dates back to at least the 1940s. The decades-old book chronicles camping trips, the 40th anniversary of Scouting and other activities in which the Boy ScoutTroop 70 participated.

“It’s got a lot of history there,” Boring said.

“The book goes back fairly far. The pages are made of cardboard, and pictures are attached to the cardboard pages. The front and back are wood.”

The scrapbook’s dimensions are roughly a foot long by 9 or 10 inches wide, Boring said, adding it’s not lightweight reading material and would be hard to misplace. Nonetheless, the scrapbook documenting the adventures of Troop 70 is nowhere to be found.

“There were a number of different troops in town then, but this is just Troop 70 (in the scrapbook),” he said. “We met at the Methodist Church. It’s Christ United Methodist now, but it was United Methodist then. It was before they built the new church.”

Boring, who was an active member of Troop 70, borrowed the scrapbook from former Scoutmaster Stan Murdock in the 1970s and photographed the pages with slide film. Those were the days before scanners and digital technology, he pointed out.

“My wife bought me a thing to convert slides to digital, but they’re not real good quality,” he said.

So Boring decided to borrow the scrapbook again and scan the pages to make better-quality digital images.

But Murdock had given it to someone Boring didn’t know, and now Murdock is gone and his son, Mike, doesn’t know what happened to the scrapbook.

“It took me three years to track him down on the Internet,” Boring said, explaining Mike Murdock resides in Florida.

“I talked to the minister at the Methodist Church to see if it might be stored there, but he was new then and didn’t know where anything was. The secretary didn’t remember seeing it.

“I talked to Vince Sellers at the historical museum, and he hadn’t seen it.”

Boring also talked to some Scoutmasters who followed Murdock, but they didn’t know about the scrapbook. He said other former members of Troop 70 are still around, as is the Troop, although it now has a different, three-digit number.

“I’m hoping someone out there’s got it,” he said.

Anyone knowing the scrapbook’s whereabouts can call Boring at 698-1075.

One of the nation’s first Boy Scout Troops was formed in Indiana in 1910. There currently are nine Boy Scout Councils in the Hoosier state. Daviess County is part of the Hoosier Trails Council, White River Trails District.

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